American McGee: EA tried to “trick” gamers into believing Alice: Madness Returns was a horror title

American McGee has criticised EA for trying to “trick” gamers during the development process of Alice: Madness Returns.

The well-known games designer pulled no punches in a recent forum discussion.

“What was frustrating was how EA Marketing interfered – telling STS from the start that ALL creative direction and final say would come from them, not from us (the developer/creator of the story/tone),” wrote McGee during a Reddit AMA session.

“That resulted in trailers that were much darker and gorier than the game … and that was a calculated disconnect created by EA”, he continued.

“They wanted to ‘trick’ gamers into believing A:MR was a hard-core horror title, even though we refused to develop it in that tone. Their thinking is, even if the game isn’t a hard-core horror title, you can market it as one and trick those customers into buying it (while driving away more casual customers, like female gamers, who might be turned off by really dark trailers). It’s all part of the race.”

EA released McGee’s Alice sequel in June 2011. It received decent critical success, achieving a Metacritic score of 70 on both the PS3 and Xbox 360, alongside an average PC score of 75.